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Category Archives: It’s Not Your Mother’s Fault

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Here’s what I’ve learned about aging gracefully: It’s no big deal that you don’t even recognize the featured guest on a talk show or presenters at award ceremonies. They’ll be gone and replaced in a few months. You’re not losing your sense of humor or relevancy because you don’t think late night talk show monologues are funny. They’re not, and this is the worst bunch in memory. Not being able to recognize or name half of the cars you …

Here’s my next Facebook post: I need to know that you’re really my friend, so please prove that you’re really reading this post by commenting with just two words about how the world is better because I’m in it. Then, have someone else witness it, so I know you’re not just lying or having someone else do it, and have your friend like it and include a photo. But in case your friend is doing this for you and not …

• Have you seen the Lincoln commercial where Matthew McConaughey is driving at night as if in a Zen moment, having an existential epiphany? It would embarrass “Mad Men,” an exercise in bathos so silly that you have to wonder if McConaughey is actually in a transcendental state over how much he’s being paid for sheer nonsense. Who commissions this absurdity? • Finally baseball has an exciting series and legitimate hero in Madison Bumgarner and we’re not focused on …

A woman I don’t know wrote me as part of a mass email this morning asking me to promote her new book to my entire mailing list. I was to include some “offer” so that someone buying the book would receive a zillion dollars in “bonus” value from all of us patsies. The last time I took a look at this, the “bonus” was pure crap, people’s articles that couldn’t be published and audio that couldn’t be sold—a scrap heap …

I receive a lot of email thanking me for Monday Morning Memo (latest one is below) or offering other views. I try to respond to them all. The subscription list keeps growing, now past 15,000. Yet, every so often, perhaps twice a year, the underbelly of society turns up. To give you a glimpse of how much hatred there is for others’ opinions, here’s a response received from someone who made what I felt were racist comments and who I …

There are many ways to be annoying typo-hunters. Here’s an excerpt from my current Monday Morning Memo: Monday Morning Perspective: A billion seconds ago it was 1951. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive and walking in Galilee. A billion hours ago no one walked on two feet on earth. And a billion dollars ago was 10.3 hours in Washington, D.C. — Alexander B. Trowbridge, former President, National Association of Manufacturers Someone actually wrote, did the calculations, and told me …

For those of you unfamiliar, “Bizarro” originated in the Superman Comics and was revived on Seinfeld. Essentially, it means “polar opposite,” so there was an evil anti-Superman, an anti-Earth, and so on. However, it may not be strictly fictional or, alternatively, I may no longer be sane. Not long ago, I posted on social media about a woman who ordered a book, then refused to pay for it, return it, or even communicate about it. She simply took the book …

The mayor of San Diego, after long denying sexual harassment claims, has now apparently gone into “two weeks of intensive therapy” after overwhelming evidence has been brought against him by several women. Therapy and rehab have become way stations on the road to continued degradation. Instead of confessing one’s sins and admitting one’s crimes—which might just lead to true catharsis—politicians, athletes, and celebrities simply go through the turnstile of rehabilitation or therapy to emerge as if from a car wash, …

An outfit called FreshBooks has put out an ebook that resulted in two dozen emails to me over the past two weeks, all on the same subject. The kinder interpretation was “these guys really learned from you,” and the unkinder was, “these guys are using your stuff.” I downloaded a copy of the free book, speed read it, and immediately found about ten instances where the concepts, examples, or words themselves were mine, on the topic of value based fees, …

Here’s one definition of compassion: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others: the victims should be treated with compassion. I wrote a Monday Morning Memo recently about achieving certain goals and a woman wrote me to tell me she was in agreement with all of my views but couldn’t implement because she was “stuck.” I took the time to write back and suggest she wasn’t “stuck” and could take action if she’d stop telling herself she …